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Primary Sources

This guide explains what primary sources are, how to find them, and teaching with primary sources.

Why teach with primary sources?

"Bringing young people into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give them a sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era. Helping students analyze primary sources can also prompt curiosity and improve critical thinking and analysis skills.

Primary sources expose students to multiple perspectives on significant issues of the past and present. In analyzing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials. Interacting with primary sources engages students in asking questions, evaluating information, making inferences, and developing reasoned explanations and interpretations of events and issues." -- Library of Congress. Getting Started with Primary Sources

How to Teach with Primary Sources

Resources for Teaching with Primary Sources

Teaching with Primary Sources Portal - The University of Arizona Libraries (UAL)

Funded by a Library of Congress grant, the portal "is a resource for instructors and librarians to identify lessons, ideas, sources, and tools to use in their courses." It also includes a set of lesson plans and some of which were "co-developed by UA discipline faculty and UAL librarians."

Document Analysis worksheets - U.S. National Archives

Document analysis is the first step in working with primary sources. Learn to think through primary source documents for contextual understanding and to extract information to make informed judgments.

Understanding Perspective in Primary Sources - U.S. National Archives

A worksheet to assist in identifying perspective in primary sources and understand how backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences shape point of view.

Case Studies on Teaching With Primary Sources - Society of American Archivists

This series of case studies is designed to illustrate the application of the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy. The guidelines were developed by a joint task force charged by SAA and the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS).

Teachers' Guides and Analysis Tool - Library of Congress

Teachers can select prompting questions from a Teacher’s Guide as needed to guide students through the analysis process. Students can use the analysis tool to examine and analyze any kind of primary source and record their responses.